introduction food childhood, clothing, tools ceremony, wealth, recreation ishi and intercultural objects The Yana and their Neighbors ishi Ishi Before Coming to the Museum 01. Hunting decoy, deer head, stuffed Yahi 02. Quiver, otterskin Yahi 03. Arrows Yahi 04. House frame, part, from Ishi's last house Yahi 05. Stem lashings (withes), from Ishi's last house Yahi 06. Sinew cordage Yahi 07. Sinew fiber Yahi 08. Mortar Yahi 09. Pestle Yahi 10. Salmon spear points, with metal barbs Yahi 11. Bag of ground coffee, denim cloth Yahi 12. Saw Yahi 13. Bag, denim cloth Yahi 14. Hat Yahi Ishi at the Museum Contemporary Art and Craft Baskets and Other Objects Made for Sale The Yahi Years of Concealment Although the Yahi had successfully avoided relocation, their numbers had been decimated by frequent skirmishes with vigilantes. The last episode in this ongoing assault occurred in 1871 at Kingsley Cave, there thirty Yahi were massacred. The remaining Yahi retreated into deep hiding. During the subsequent forty years of concealment, they were sighted only occasionally. Wowunupo'mu tetna (Bear's Hiding Place) The man later known as Ishi, with four other survivors, struggled to maintain the Yahi way of life in well-camouflaged camps along Deer Creek. In 1908, after a team of surveyors had encountered an Indian (probably Ishi), two local men searched for and found one of these camps, which the Yahi called Wowunupo'mu tetna (Bear's Hiding Place). They discovered only a paralyzed and terrified old woman, Ishi's mother, and took the objects they found there. Years later, after Ishi's "capture," one of them sold these objects to the Museum. A Stone Age Culture? At the turn of the century, the Yahi were popularly characterized as a Stone Age culture. Yet, as some of the objects shown on these pages reveal, acculturation of the Yahi had been going on for decades. After the Gold Rush, as they were dispossessed from their land and their way of life disrupted, the Yahi began to adopt new materials and tools: glass supplanted obsidian for arrowpoints, cotton fabric was used for clothing and utensils, iron nails formed the points of salmon spears and awls. Although Ishi and his family tried to avoid the invading culture, they spent much of their lives coming to terms with it, exploiting it for their own benefit when they could. Ishi was hardly the "last wild Indian," as he was commonly called.